


wanna stay home today

by itemfinder



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 03:30:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17738165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itemfinder/pseuds/itemfinder
Summary: Bucky isn't feeling well. Steve shows up.(Low on hurt, high on comfort.)





	wanna stay home today

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to [DivineMadness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DivineMadness/) for cheerleading and the stucky discord for showing me how it's done

Bucky dropped face-down onto the couch, a little more gingerly than he might have on any other day. He wasn't injured, hadn't been out on Avengers’ (or anyone else's) business for over a week now, but he had just gotten done sitting, half-awake, on the bathroom floor and letting his stomach reject most of the breakfast he'd eaten about twenty minutes prior. 

He inhaled deeply and then let out a long, slow breath, not so much in misery as resignation. A quick burst of vomiting after a particularly enjoyable meal? At least he'd gotten the meal in the first place. Hell, at least he got a meal the night _before_. And absolutely, he'd rather he didn't have to spend the time in front of a toilet, but he'd had years of experience proving his body could handle this and much worse treatment.

Besides, he'd never really been a drama queen about being sick -- not like certain someones he could name. There was something fascinating about it, like watching his immune system perform a trick. Sure, his stomach might ache, but his body was waging its own war against whatever it found questionable about the food he put into it this morning. Considering it had kept itself going for several decades with no help from him (and active harm from others), it seemed fair to let it have a few misfires. He was pretty sure he wasn't really coming down with something -- he had a vague idea that he would be feeling a hell of a lot worse if that were the case -- but he didn't want to consider that his favorite bagel place was somehow to blame, either.

Honestly, the main worry he had right now was that Steve was going to find out and either insist Bucky do something to make sure he wasn't sick or, worse, use the situation as an excuse to march off to get in somebody's face about it. He'd had vague plans to spend today reading, or maybe fixing something around the house -- there was a stack of paperbacks that had been accumulating for a few months now, and the apartment needed a few minor repairs. Mostly stuff broken by the usual activities of a metal-armed former assassin who felt like he deserved a second chance at not being fully mentally engaged before coffee.

He knew (from more experience than he'd like to admit to, and not all of it with Hydra) that he could power through the situation. Get back on his feet, try grabbing something else to eat, keep on as if the interruption hadn't happened. Or, and this option was currently winning, just stay on the couch for a while. Nothing about today was in any way time-sensitive, and the novelty of “wasting” a day wasn't in any danger of wearing off. He shifted, bringing up an arm to block the worst of the light, and winced when he caught some of his hair in the plates in the process. He really should have put it up at the first warning signs of nausea, but dealing with it now seemed like more trouble than it was worth.

Natasha had recommended a few new hair products by way of leaving them under his sink when he was out one day, but he hadn't yet found the right moment to try them. He wasn't sure if he was expecting them to be perfect or secretly full of itching powder -- with Natasha it could go either way. All he knew was she was waiting to see what his reaction would be with a little too much anticipation for comfort. He was still hoping Shuri would have pity and send on what he'd been using back in Wakanda -- oddly enough, customs was tougher to circumvent when he was actually trying to stay in legal channels. He hadn't used the full routine all the time -- there was hardly a point if he was just going straight back into the fields -- but it was leagues beyond anything he'd found since returning to New York.

Getting his hair cut shorter would be another way to solve the problem, but… Some days everything since getting shipped out felt enough like a fever dream that it was a comfort to be able to immediately see something was different. Sure, he had the arm, but focusing in on that for too long ran the risk of getting him too far in his head. His hair had never sent his thoughts in that particular direction.

His phone pinging with a text interrupted that line of thought, and he uncurled enough to grab it, squinting at the screen. 

“LUNCH? CAN BRING FOOD” -- Steve's texting habits were pretty singular, but they had a kind of internal consistency. Bucky was pretty sure Stark had said something about capitalization early on (probably in the same breath as some “Cap” pun) and things had gone downhill from there. Steve spent enough time tooling around online -- and typing up mission reports -- that Bucky was certain Steve knew his texting style was out of the ordinary and was actively choosing to be a pain about it. The terse phrasing, on the other hand, had more to do with Steve's sausage fingers posing a difficulty in getting the right buttons pressed. And watching Steve's face scrunch up as he typed, cleared, and re-typed a message? Probably in Bucky's top five favorite things about the future.

A glance at the time showed he'd been drowsing on the couch longer than it seemed, and his stomach gave an interested gurgle at the thought of something to eat. He sent back “not bagels”, not that he thought there was any danger of Steve deciding they would make a good lunch, and levered himself into a standing position. He probably had enough time to brew another round of coffee before Steve showed up, but only if he didn't let himself lie back down. And while it was brewing, he could grab a hat, which seemed like a much better plan than hopping in the shower.

He got a few more texts (“OK”, “PIZZA”, and finally “ETA FIVE MIN”) while he busied himself with the coffee maker and shuffling a few of the piles of stuff into slightly taller piles.

The downside of having so much space nowadays appeared to be that the clutter grew to fit. He could swear the stuff was breeding when his back was turned -- _he_ certainly hadn't bought any of the knick-knacks he kept finding in his couch. The guns and knives, those he would (mostly) take the blame for, but the cat toys seemed more like another example of Natasha's idea of a joke. Or maybe Wilson's? Bucky hadn't quite figured out Wilson's M.O., beyond argumentative -- which was probably why he and Steve got on so well.

He was examining a stuffed mouse he'd found under the mail when Steve bustled in, bearing a tower of pizza boxes and a few grocery bags besides. “The elevator's out again, and Mrs. Roselyn says to tell you thanks for fixing her ice maker,” Steve said, and then the bags stopped rustling and Bucky had the distinct sensation of being stared at.

He set the mouse back on the counter and looked down at himself, as if he'd be able to spot whatever had made Steve pull out the furrowed eyebrows. “What?”

Steve opened his mouth, closed it, and visibly changed tracks. “So what have you been up to today?”

Bucky felt his own furrowed eyebrows happening, and crossed his arms as well. Steve nodded, like Bucky had actually given an answer, and resumed plating the pizza. (Last time Bucky tried just handing out the boxes he'd gotten laid into by Wilson, as if any of them ate slow enough to notice what was holding the food. Steve had stood in the background and inhaled pizza while Wilson was ranting about frat boys, like Steve hadn't been using the boxes as plates not two days previous, but they'd both used actual dishes every time since.)

“Sam’s in town again,” Steve said. “Might want to do dinner over the weekend. And Tony's got some new communicators he wants the team to try.” Once he had two plates with most of two pizzas between them, Steve headed for the couch.

Bucky followed, snagging one of the plates and setting his coffee mug on the end table. “Didn't we just _get_ new communicators?” he asked, stuffing most of a slice into his mouth.

“Sure,” Steve said in between his own large mouthfuls. “But Clint broke his and Tony decided they needed an upgrade.”

“And we all know nothing ever goes wrong with Stark's upgrades.” Not that Tony was entirely following in the 'flashy in use and when it inevitably goes wrong’ steps his old man favored, but things _did_ go wrong.

Steve shrugged -- they'd had more than a few conversations about asking for more Wakandan tech, but so far it hadn't been worth the argument with Stark or the hassle of import. Not while nothing had malfunctioned outside of training, and even that had been minor.

Bucky made it through three and a half slices before his stomach gave an unpleasant lurch. He stopped just before he took his next bite, as if freezing in place would make the problem go away. He had about six seconds to start to feel optimistic before Steve noticed he'd stopped eating and his stomach clenched again, this time in a way he wasn't going to be able to ignore.

“Buck, you're looking a little green,” Steve said, reaching out with a concerned (pizza-grease covered) hand.

Before Steve could make contact, Bucky bolted for the bathroom. He crouched down in front of the toilet, waiting for his stomach to make up its mind and thinking he really needed to invest in a toilet brush. When he'd been in the city in Wakanda there had been some kind of cleaning service, and there hadn't been much need for it when he was hopping between safehouses and shitty apartments.

He had a vague feeling his mother wouldn't be surprised at all -- he remembered her commenting more than once that he'd better find a wife who liked housekeeping as much as he liked avoiding it. Steve had been the one to keep things tidy when they lived together, but Bucky had never been sure if that was because of the threat of Sarah Rogers’ heavenly disappointment or because Steve felt like he needed to do more to earn his place.

“Were you gonna say you weren't feeling right, or just let me wonder why you looked like death today?” Steve asked. Bucky turned to find Steve settling in behind him, the eyebrows back in full force.

“You sure know how to charm a guy, Rogers,” Bucky said.

Steve’s expression softened and he gently pulled off Bucky's hat, setting it on the floor. Next, he pulled open Bucky's hand to retrieve the pizza slice Bucky had apparently brought with him when he hot-stepped it in here. It was placed on the sink, and Steve wiped his hands on his pants before brushing some hair out of Bucky's face. At that, Bucky was forced to turn back toward the toilet and close his eyes. The move wasn't to avoid Steve's sincerely caring expression, and it definitely wasn't to hide his own too grateful one. He was just preparing for another bout of nausea, that was all.

“Learned it all from you, sweetheart,” Steve said, and started to card his hand through Bucky's hair.

Bucky wondered if this was the point he got himself up off the floor and tried to return to eating, but even the thought was enough for his stomach to gurgle unpleasantly. He let out a carefully steady breath. “You should go finish your pizza,” he told Steve. “There's no point in both of us sitting on the floor.”

Steve hummed. Someone less familiar with the Steve Rogers brand of communication might have mistaken Steve's response for agreement, but Bucky knew Steve was only agreeing that Bucky thought so and that Steve had absolutely zero intention of following through. It was a sound Bucky hadn't had to learn to translate until after Steve had found him and the rest of the 107th, and Bucky was still trying to decide how he felt about it. Back before the war there hadn't been much for Steve to be smugly certain about, and it was a shift Bucky wholeheartedly supported. But Steve could stand to spend a little less time directing that smugness at Bucky -- and, more importantly, he always pulled it out when he was being _wrong_.

Which wasn't to say that Steve hadn't had gone his own way since they met, but he'd been channeling a little less “righteous” in his daily life. Possibly getting scienced into everything he was now had gotten a little to his head.

As much as Bucky was considering living in the bathroom (at least until his body figured itself out), having Steve at his back was making him itchy. He leaned forward enough that Steve dropped his hands from Bucky's head, and stood. Steve stood as well and took a few steps backward. For a moment, Bucky just looked at Steve. His slacks were a little dusty from sitting on the floor, but otherwise he looked about how he always did these days -- a little concerned and like it was going to take a crowbar to get him to budge on whatever was making him set his jaw like that. Getting him to crack a smile had always been a challenge -- oftentimes it took a jolt of adrenaline, and the Captain America gig had upped the stakes.

For now, Bucky headed back out to the couch, knocking shoulders with Steve as he went. He could be in the common area like a normal person, at least for as long as it took him to kick Steve out.

The pizza boxes had been cleared away and so had his coffee mug, likely by Steve while Bucky was more focused on keeping his lunch down. At least that solved the question of trying to eat some more. The living room had been straightened up a little too, some of the detritus of living put into neater stacks, and the book that had been facedown under the coffee table had somehow acquired an actual bookmark. “Rogers, I think you might need a hobby,” he called out, settling down on the couch and idly flipping through the book. “It should take more than five seconds before you feel the need to start tidying.”

“I don't know about that, Tony keeps telling me I'm too old to learn new tricks,” Steve said, and just when had he gotten in the kitchen?

Bucky rolled his eyes. “You really shouldn't get such a kick out of riling up the Stark kid.”

“Hey, I'll lay off of Tony if you call a ceasefire with Sam. He's still flinching every time he hears a pigeon.” 

Bucky chuckled over the sound of water running in the other room. He'd run week-long ops that took less setup, but pranking Wilson always paid off in the end. Wilson hadn't taken any of it lying down, either, and they were probably lucky no one else had been caught in the crossfire so far. There was probably something wrong with finding so much reassurance in what amounted to a prank war, but it was completely isolated from so much of the complexity of Bucky's day-to-day life. Hydra, past or present, had no bearing on finding sugar in his salt shaker or staying up ‘til all hours browsing amazon to prep for his next counterattack. 

Sighing, he slouched further into the couch, letting his eyes drift closed. His head had started to pound dully, so maybe he'd been premature in thinking he wasn't actually getting sick. It was even possible the trouble he was having with keeping food down was partly to blame -- his metabolism didn't burn through calories anywhere near as quickly as Steve's did these days, but he still had to be careful about getting enough to eat.

He heard Steve make his way toward the couch -- for as graceful as he could be during a fight, he tended to stomp when he wasn't paying attention, probably still expecting to be half his size. Bucky cracked one eye open to watch Steve's approach. He was carrying a glass of water and what looked like a wet rag. “Drink some of this,” Steve said, taking a seat on the couch next to Bucky then offering the glass to him.

Bucky hadn't realized how thirsty he was until he had a solution in front of him, and he had downed half the glass before thinking he probably should have returned with some kind of snarky response. He chewed on his lip a moment, and instead just said, “Thanks.”

Steve telegraphed his movements pretty clearly as he took the rag and draped it over Bucky's eyes. It was cool and surprisingly nice on Bucky's forehead. Before Bucky could say anything, Steve started petting his hair again, and Bucky couldn't have stopped a sigh of relief if he'd tried. “Just rest a while, alright?” Steve suggested.

“Don't you have anything better to do?” A yawn obscured the end of his sentence.

“Sure, but I'll put off ironing my underwear just this once.” Steve's tone didn't quite manage teasing, but between the couch, the coolness of the rag, and the steady rhythm of Steve's hand, Bucky was already falling asleep.


End file.
